Noah loses TV privileges

On the way to school yesterday morning Noah Kennel – son of Marge and and Andrew Kennel, age: 8 years old – lost his TV privileges.

Noah had been sitting in his usual seat, back and right, of the family’s 2004 Honda Odyssey (16 / 23 mpg) watching Finding Nemo as he usually was on the automobile’s fold-out, 7″ screen, when he was overcome by a sudden urge to violently strike his sister: Kylie Kennel – daughter of Marge and family friend Edgardo Salvey*, age: 6 years old.

Perhaps Noah’s anger stemmed from the fact that his mother had played Finding Nemo every day on the way to school for the past 9 months and, frankly, Noah couldn’t give a flying f*ck about that damn blue clownfish anymore. Or perhaps it was the fact that his mother cautioned him about something every two minutes on every single drive there:

If he wanted to eat a stale apple fritter that he’d spied poking out of a Dunkin Donuts bag that had become captured and partially mashed and grease-covered by the front passenger seat reclining motor, then he felt that this was his business and nobody else’s. Certainly the rest of the family had made it plain that they didn’t want it by repeatedly mashing it with their muddy shoes instead of rescuing it, as was the only logical response when someone spies a treat!

“Was he the only rational man, er, boy in the family!” he often cried out rhetorically to himself in inside his own pre-adolescent head.

Noah felt the same went for if he felt like scratching his own as*hole or, perhaps, just exploring around in there out of a sense of boredom or curiosity.

And – if after a tasty apple fritter with road salt garnish and a little anal probing to relieve stress and back-ache – Noah felt like polishing it all off with a hearty swig from his bottle of ear medicine, why, who was to say he shouldn’t! After-all, it was his ear medicine!

Noah’s sister Kylie wasn’t bothering him. She was sitting happily next to him, taking in the very same film Noah was. Indeed, she was engrossed by Nemo’s plight and thus entirely unaware of her brother’s simmering fury. But the fact that Kylie wasn’t bothering Noah didn’t matter. In fact, it was the very placidity that she radiated which begged Noah to intervene. Her state of utter contentedness mocked Noah, and his prison of infinite irritation.

Unable to strike his mother, eat a fritter, play with his own bum or drink his ear medicine, Noah seized upon the only avenue of action left to him: make someone as unhappy as he felt. Yes, Kylie. His stupid, stupid-head sister, sitting there, all holier-than-thou-art.

Aware as he was that this was perhaps an unethical course of action, a supernatural force – against which Noah had no power – compelled him to reach out nonetheless, and suddenly mash his palm into his sister’s face as hard as he could.

The shock and confusion written on his sister’s face as her small brain went from processing the narrative of Finding Nemo to this new sensory stimuli, quickly gave way to a look of pure panic and absolute fear as her small head was pinned by Noah’s comparatively “gigantic” palm against the adjacent minivan window. As Kylie began to cry out, there they were again: the eyes in that rectangular mirror.